Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Multiboxers Crucified (Episode 23)

First off I would encourage people to rid themselves of ignorance regarding this issue and educate yourselves. These are the websites we use to multibox, we are not botters, we are not cheaters, we pay more for our game than anyone else.

Dear CCP, Multiboxing is a huge challenge and time investment, taken on by those who love your game. Don't hurt the dedicated players who have poured countless hours into EVE by banning multiboxing.

Input duplication vs multiboxing
Edit: a clarification for those trying to walk the line between multiboxing and input duplication. I realize ccp is banning input duplication, but I think that the other capabilities of isboxer and similar software, as soon as the mob gets worked up over it, will ensure that owning 2 accounts is "unfair". The main purpose of isboxer is input duplication, allowing you to control multiple accounts as if one person. Removing that feature is a huge blow and on the path to a complete removal of management of alts with any efficiency.

Side Question, is all this about CCP trying to stop ganking???

1st let me say that I have multiboxed in EVE for as long as I can remember, probably it's one of the main reasons I've stayed interested in the same game outside of the increasing diminishing larger scale PVP fights.

Please read the probably too long letter below. I love Eve and all its challenges. There are many dedicated people like myself who love the game and that's why we have multiple accounts and have spent countless hours trying to become competent in multiboxing.

To me, Multiboxing is an end game level content. I spend hours.. weeks learning about the various task I'm going to undertake (recently it's been incursions or bombing), designing and testing fits, dying in horrible fire's while adapting to try and overcome the challenge.

Unlike some, I choose to pay for my accounts with cash. Yes, all my alts I pay for with cash and have never plexed my accounts. Eve is a hobby of mine, like RC planes, model training sets, golfing or any other hobby. I've designed, built and continue to upgrade 2 very high end computers so that my multi boxing experience is smoother and faster, especially as Eve's clients get better graphics or I engage in content with more and more people.

This policy doesn't just hurt the people with dozens of miners, the guy with 50 proteus accounts in wormhole space, the multi boxing haulers or any specific niche. It hurts everyone in EVE.

If this policy is enforced to appease the vocal minority, it's end result will hurt everyone. If you wanted an alt to help you salvage or run missions faster, if you wanted a 2nd hauler to get your minerals moved around the ever larger New Eden... The example are nearly endless.

Mineral pricing, ship and module costs, invention success all will get more expensive, hurting the already fragile industry.

Yes, I am sure to the average player seeing someone with 10 mining accounts when you can barely afford one hulk is annoying and frustrating. However that is part of the same reason that the person your being angry at starred another account and learned how to run 2 accounts at once, then learned how to afford that account. They saw someone else with "more" and instead of pounding on the desk declaring how unfair the world is, they decided to adapt and become better, faster and more efficient themselves.

You see I can't help but detect some level of "it's not fair" attitude among some here who are against multi boxing. I see a thread of complaints bordering on "if I can't do it because of x, y or z you can't do it either."

Star Citizen is an example. I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars in that game, for many reasons, but I appreciate those who do. They are paying the company for better ships and items, helping that company and in turn improving their game experience. Except like Eve and multiboxing it's a fair playing field. Anyone could start a 2nd or 10 alts, all that's stopping them is money and learning the skill to control them effectively.

I feel this policy is extremely short sited. It will cost the players a tremendous amount, it will hurt the bottom line of CCP needlessly and instead placates a group of people who will surely move on to the next pitch fork issue like how unfair of an advantage officer modules are because they can't afford them.

But all that aside, your hurting the dedicated players like myself who aim to be better and more challenged in EVE. We are all extremely dedicated and loyal players, who have stayed in EVE because we love the challenge of the game and want to be ever improving in it. We've spent way more time invested into EVE partly because of our ability to multi box, have spent an enormous amount of money on our hobby which we didn't spend with another game (even the people with only 1 or 2 mining alts or ratters are vital to your game).

The call for people to remove "input duplication" (soon multiboxing all together im sure) is a case of mob mentality from people who don't understand the benefits they are gaining from it, the effort and time people put into it or how much it has helped keep CCP afloat all these years.

Multiboxers are already finding work arounds

Regarding work arounds we are already finding solutions with even adding any features to isboxer or similar software.

4 comments:

No offense but this whole cast seems like a convoluted attempt to justify your use of ISBoxer.

It is not as complicated as you want to believe it is. The new rule is simple: "One button press/mouse click is required for each action in the game."

So someone with multiple clients open is perfectly fine within the new limits. All of the garbage you mentioned about alts being necessary is therefore completely irrelevant, as they are still allowed to function. The only limitation on the alts, and this should be understandable in an MMORTS game - all of your alts have to be controlled manually.

Is it really so hard to see why it is considered cheap to have your actions on one client automatically propagate to all of your other clients? If you have 7 bombers on ISBoxer, you can effectively perform 7 actions with a single click.

I understand you make the distinction between "action propagation" and a "macro". Perhaps you are not realizing that when you propagate a single click across 7 clients, the behavior actually looks something like this:

...And this is accomplished _with a single mouse click or button press_.

This is the distinction, and it is clear. You can even think of this as a sort of "dynamic macro". It is true that macros are typically programmed in advance, but this action propagation works very much like a macro, except that it is generated and executed on the fly.

And I think the overall objective is also pretty clear. It is not to "solve" SB squads, or "ganking", or anything like that. It is to curb the unfair advantage that people have which is achieved using software which artificially multiplies their actions beyond their normal human capabilities.

We can still use alts with multiple clients open all at once. We just can't use software to artificially inject actions in to the client, regardless of it's a bot, a macro, or an action propagation that allows that to happen.

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